Why’d You Do That? Running a Photo of a Killer on the Home Page
Several readers have already written in to protest The Times’s use of a particularly graphic photograph on the home page on Monday. It showed a gunman, in suit and tie, standing beside the body of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, whom the shooter had killed moments earlier. I asked Phil Corbett, associate masthead editor for standards and ethics, who was involved in the decision to use the photo, to explain the editors’ thinking.
Liz Spayd: Can you describe for readers how these decisions are made? Who is involved, and how do you weigh the sometimes intangible concept of news value against considerations of offending readers or the families of victims?
Phil Corbett: In a situation like this, the discussion about using a photo would start with the editors handling the story, the photo editors and the editors overseeing how stories are being played on the home page and on our mobile feed. In the case of a big breaking story, or a particularly sensitive photo, a masthead-level editor is likely to be involved as well.
In this case, I think we all agreed that the picture should be on the home page. First off, it’s an important news story, given the Russian involvement in Syria and the tensions among various countries and factions. And the picture very clearly shows the shocking nature of the attack — much more powerfully, I think, than a mere description in the story itself. The well-dressed gunman, the elegant setting — all of this is part of the news value. And while the picture is startling, it’s not gory or sensational in a gratuitous way.
Spayd: Are there different standards for the page where the story appears (the article page), versus the home page or even the front page of the newspaper tomorrow?
Corbett: In some cases, yes. There might be times when we decide an image is newsworthy and important enough that it should be published, but we decide not to put it on the top of the home page, or the top of Page 1 in print. Readers come to those images cold, with no preparation or choice about what they are going to see, and so we try to take extra care to be sensitive. On the other hand, if readers click from the home page to read a particular article, or decide to swipe through a slide show of images, they are more likely to be prepared for the content. For example, editors thought carefully about the arrangement of the powerful pictures we ran recently about the drug-related killings in the Philippines, and we included a clear warning to readers about how upsetting the images were.
In the Ankara case, we decided we were comfortable with the still photo on the home page. But were not prepared to give such prominence to a video clip of the situation, which seemed potentially more upsetting. We had a link to the video, but did not show it on our home page.
Spayd: Why not crop the image so that the gunman is shown but not the body of the ambassador?
Corbett: That would really undercut the power of the news picture. If the image had been bloody or gruesome, we may have had to consider that option, but we didn’t think it was necessary here.
Spayd: Can you think of an example where The Times decided not to use a gruesome photo or image, and can you explain why it wasn’t allowed in that case?
Corbett: There are many, many pictures we choose not to run. Sadly, almost every day our photo editors see upsetting, even grisly images of war or carnage — from Syria, from terrorist bombings and other situations. An unending stream of such images might prove not only upsetting to readers, but eventually numbing. When we do run a violent or upsetting image, it’s generally one that has real news significance, or can convey the gravity of a situation in an especially powerful way.
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Here’s my take. I agree with Times editors that this was an instance where the photograph was so essential to conveying the horrific nature of the attack that its use on the home page was appropriate. (Most other news sites made the same choice.) Visual imagery long ago demonstrated its power to affect people’s emotions and to occasionally change the course of history. They can do so in a way that articles rarely can: Think the charred bodies of civilian contractors hanging from a bridge in Falluja, or the floating body of a drowned Syrian boy on a Turkish beach. Such images can be brutal for unwarned readers who open up the home page or the morning paper. That means decisions about their use should be made with care. But they should also be made unflinchingly.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/public-editor/whyd-you-do-that-running-a-photo-of-a-killer-on-the-home-page.html
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